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Nobel committee can't see the entire picture
2010-10-16 02:32
 

Mr Thorbjoern Jagland has been a senior official, the former prime minister, foreign minister, president of the Parliament in Norway and he is now chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

If we invite him to attend our "Happy Dictionary" (a popular quiz show on CCTV), I would like to ask him a multiple-choice question:

Who advocates that China needs to be colonized by the West for another 300 years before it can achieve modernization?

A. Wang Jingwei  B. Cao Rulin  C. Liu Xiaobo.

If Mr Jagland chooses the answers of A or B, I would say he is too old. It is ridiculous he awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo before knowing his crazy ideas.

Maybe Mr Jagland, already over 60 years old, is too busy to investigate the situation. It doesn't matter. It is a traditional Chinese virtue to help the elderly.

In the early 1980s, Liu Xiaobo was a little-known teacher at the Beijing Normal University. After stints at Oslo University in Norway and Columbia University in the US, he seems to have acquired the way for making quick fame.

He first acted as a literary vanguard and became famous with the popular way of insulting celebrities at that time. Then he made a special trip back from abroad to participate in the political turmoil in Beijing in 1989. This is how he became famous for a while.

However, Liu Xiaobo's "star status" did not last long. China was not divided as he had expected.

Instead, in the 1990s, China entered a rapid development period during which Liu had been silent and frustrated.

During this period, the only thing he did was attack China's socialist system. The most sensational part is that he initiated and drafted the so-called Charter 08 to change China's current social system. In December 2009, Liu was sentenced to 11 years in prison for inciting subversion of state power.

After giving him better educated on Liu's basic situation, I would like to ask Mr Jagland: Is the best way to win the Nobel Peace Prize to challenge China's laws? If so, how can we have the rule of law in China?

Many Chinese are wondering if there were any other motivating factors behind the Peace Prize award.

Let us look at what Mr Jagland has said, "Liu has made non-violent efforts to improve the fundamental human rights situation in China for a long time."

But what substantial contributions has Liu made for China's advancement of human rights?

He advocated a number of Western slogans and catered to the pleasure of the West.

Since the establishment of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, China has experienced several critical moments.

When China was poor and weak with a messy human rights record, there were many heroes fighting against colonialism and imperialism. Why didn't these heroes win the Nobel Prize?

Now when China is increasingly powerful, people's quality of life is being improved and the human rights situation is being improved, Mr Jagland and other Westerners cannot stomach it and begin to make trouble for China.

To put it bluntly, it is because of the West's own sense of superiority. Mr Jagland and other Westerners are expressing insignificant concern for human rights in China while enjoying the benefits of cheap Chinese goods.

For China, they can pity and can sympathize, but cannot tolerate that China's economy is increasing at over 8 percent annually while their own countries are struggling with economic recovery.

Westerners belligerently think it should be the West leading and the East obedient, and this international principle cannot be challenged.

The so-called improvement of China's fundamental human rights requires China to follow the road of the West and do what the West wants it to.

Let's look to history for some examples. In 1975, during the most competitive period between the Soviet Union and the West, the Nobel Peace Prize was timely awarded to Andrei Sakharov, a Soviet dissident. When the Soviet Union yielded to the West, the Nobel Peace Prize was timely awarded to Mikhail Gorbachev. Did Gorbachev win the award just because he directly brought down the Soviet Union?

Let us look at the awards in recent years.

In 2009, the Peace Prize was awarded to US President Barack Obama. Some of the media commented, "The five people play up to Obama so brazenly that even many Americans feel sick."

In 2007, it was awarded to former US Vice President Al Gore. Some scholars have lamented, "A politician who does not understand the problems of climate change got the Nobel Peace Prize because of this academic issue."

Li Ao, a well-known Taiwan commentator, said, "Most people only know about bad boys, but forget about bad old people. The problems of bad boys are caused by bad old people."

Sadly, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has become a gathering place of bad old people. They successfully dragged the Nobel Peace Prize to failure.

The original intention of the establishment of the Nobel Peace Prize was to reward a person that "has made efforts to promote national harmony, promote international friendship, promote disarmament and publicize peaceful meetings."

But now it is lost on political roads, regardless of its original intention.

Maybe it will go the way of entertainment. Mr. Jagland is just like the creator of an outdated soap opera. His plots may be funny or strange but it is hard to take them seriously.

But it is unfair to Alfred Nobel, the scientist the award is named after. He left $9.2 million and set up this famous award.

We can only wonder how he would feel if he knew this ideological hammer was driving this award.

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